Tag: Toyota
The Power of the Internet: Toyota DMCA Issue
by Harry on Nov.18, 2008, under Site Updates
One of the primary reasons we’ve finally gotten around to starting a blog is this whole Toyota DMCA issue. It’s spreading very quickly online, and I’ve been amazed at the response and support we’ve received on this. If you have no idea what I’m talking about… take a look at the great article TorrentFreak wrote.
This is an incredibly powerful example of how brands can either flourish or crash-and-burn when an event goes viral on the internet. In this case, Toyota put us in a difficult situation: forcing us to decide between possible (expensive) legal action or disregarding the rights of our members. I have no doubt that other sites were contacted with the same strong-arm tactics as us, however I couldn’t in good conscious delete wallpapers to which I wasn’t sure Toyota held the copyright. I was very clear in saying that I do not want to violate any copyrights, and if Toyota provided accurate DMCA Takedown Notices, I would be happy to immediately delete any images that might be in violation. At one point, I even went as far as offering Garrett Biggs (at Toyota) a form template for DMCA Takedown Notices, where he would just have to fill in the blanks and send it back to me. I never received it back, but was instead presented with more removal demands.
After long discussions and feeling I was getting no where with Mr. Biggs, I finally decided to email a few blogs who might be interested in this DMCA butchering story. Specifically, Conley at Free Culture News took interest in our story and contacted a few friends (namely Ben at TorrentFreak) who ended up getting this snowball rolling.
After this started spreading around, I followed the story and started reading all the comments that came flooding in. I was amazed by how this backfired on Toyota, and how much negativity was being thrown around. As I said earlier, viral events can be a PR nightmare for a company… especially one like Toyota who invests to much into preserving their brand name. I decided to collect a few of the most amusing, extreme, or interesting comments that I found scattered around the web on this topic. Now, for your enjoyment, here they are after the break: (continue reading…)